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Snow Plow Storage In A Shipping Container

I'm in the business of selling and renting steel shipping containers used for storage. I've been a member of this site for a bunch of years now as I plow some friends and families driveways in addition to my own home and business parking lot.

I've always wanted to store my plow inside of a storage container but my 8' wide plow won't fit in the end even when angles. It's too heavy to drop and then pick up into the container as the floor is raised up off the ground 5" or so. So, I've been storing my plow at home in the garage which gets in the way. A few months ago I happened to purchase a couple of "open side" 20' long shipping containers. I quickly sold one to a company and then bought another for my inventory. It was then that it hit me that this would be the perfect box to store my plow in so I gave it a shot. It didn't work as planned as the floor on an open side is higher than a normal shipping container due to the I bean needing to be thicker to accommodate for the increased weight of the large side doors. I then built a ramp out of stone granite blocks I had lying around and it worked out great. I now have the plow at my shop and out of the garage at home.

I had my web guy shoot a video of me pulling into the container and unhooking the plow so that I could put it up on my site. I also installed a set of shelving brackets in the container to put supplies such as my plow joystick and strobe light on to keep everything in one place. If anyone knows how to show the video box inside this post, let me know. I was only able to insert the link below.

The open side is brand new (meaning shipped one way from China) and expensive ($5,200). I've got one in addition to the one shown in the video. A typical used container that opens from the end only (as opposed to the side like this one) will typically cost around a couple grand. But you'd need a forklift or some other machine to pick up the plow from an end to slide it into the container.

The only advantage I can see with a shipping container is portability. But if you're having to build a ramp to get the plow in it, it's not really portable anyway. For the cost of a new shipping container with side doors, you can build a pretty dang nice shed that you can drive right into and unhook your plow.

The advantages to storing plows inside are many. I store them inside primarily to keep them from rusting as fast, hoses from drying out and cracking prematurely, and most importantly to help prevent theft.

It's been kept inside it's entire life. Plus I'm nuts about power washing the hell out of it after every single storm. I spray all the electronics with an electronics cleaner and much of the plow with PBlaster, silicone spray, etc after every storm. I figure I use about 5 to 7 dollars worth of chemicals on it after every storm. And...I primed and painted what little rust it had last year.

wizardsr;1079366 said:

The only advantage I can see with a shipping container is portability. But if you're having to build a ramp to get the plow in it, it's not really portable anyway. For the cost of a new shipping container with side doors, you can build a pretty dang nice shed that you can drive right into and unhook your plow.

The advantages to storing plows inside are many. I store them inside primarily to keep them from rusting as fast, hoses from drying out and cracking prematurely, and most importantly to help prevent theft.

Click to expand...

The ramp I built is crude. It took about an hour to build. I could dismantle and spread the stone in about 20 minutes. I could have the container loaded on a wrecker and down the road 10 minutes later if I wanted to. The two advantages two a container over a shed are, mice don't get into a container and containers are harder to break into. Other than that I agree with you that you could indeed build a really nice (and better looking than a container) shed for 5K. One other thing...towns typically don't whack you for property tax on a container....